I didn’t think too hard when the taxi driver in Sorrento (Italy) asked me what I had for dinner. The words just rolled off my tongue. “Pasta ai frutti di mare.” I don’t remember how my travel companions responded. All I remember is what Bartolo the taxi driver said next. “Buon italiano!” “Good Italian!” I…
by Janice Nigro A plane is that modern vehicle of irony, speeding you through the air at times to areas of the Earth that might still be in the stone age. Or at least into another apparent universe where we don’t understand the language, we don’t look like anyone else, and we don’t have the…
by Janice Nigro What is the craziest excuse you have ever used for traveling somewhere? I am guessing it wasn’t to play in a rematch for eisstockschiessen. Yes, it was a rematch for eisstockschiessen (an ice game but not curling) that compelled me to travel to Germany in potentially the worst part of winter, for…
by Janice Nigro My colleagues and I just submitted a scientific paper we have been working on for seven years. Seven years. It’s hard for me to admit that. Maybe I shouldn’t admit it. A lot can happen in seven years. Babies have been born, and people spread around the western world like they were…
by Janice Nigro I took a last-minute trip to an island in Indonesia I had never been to in September. I don’t know how a person can do that, but I did. Cheaper fares if you fly through Hong Kong when it’s typhoon season, helped maybe. I even bought a new underwater camera rig before…
by Janice Nigro Since my travel story hit the LA Times, I have been wondering why that one worked while so many others did not. And if I could figure out why, then I might be able to make it happen more often. Or tell others how to do it. There are some straightforward procedural…
by Janice Nigro When I started to write this piece, I thought, I have no idea why travel writing comes so naturally to me. I just thought, it’s like anything, when you want to do it, you actually do it. Still when you do something right, the first thing people want to know, is how…
